The United States has gun laws that regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition. Federal gun laws along with most States and some local jurisdictions have additionally imposed their own firearms restrictions. At the present time, California gun laws are known to be some of the strictest in the United States, for example, California has many restrictions and laws pertaining to semi-automatic firearms. One of these laws relates to the detachability of a firearm magazine of a semi-automatic firearm and the ability to rapidly reload a semi-automatic firearm with another firearm magazine while some other State laws regulate the ammunition capacity of semi-automatic firearm magazines. Many firearms including semi-automatic rifles that have readily detachable firearm magazines are prohibited by some States. Such limitations may be due to the potential danger that these firearms may present when in the hands of people who have a desire to harm other people. However, there are many law abiding gun enthusiasts who would relish being able to use currently State prohibited semi-automatic weapons in a responsible manner, for example, for target practice or for hunting.
Many mostly inadequate solutions to this problem have been suggested. One of these proposed solutions uses a magazine release blocking mechanism or a magazine lock such as a BULLET BUTTON®. The BULLET BUTTON® modifies a rifle so that the magazine is not removable by using a simple finger operated magazine position (release) button. It replaces the conventional magazine position button with a small recessed magazine position button that necessitates the use of a small appropriately sized object or tool such as, a bullet, a small screwdriver or other appropriate tools that may be inserted into the recessed magazine release button. The BULLET BUTTON® has been rendered largely ineffective as simply having an appropriate tool at hand or design around tools such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,776,426 still allows relatively rapid firearm magazine exchange and it does nothing to prevent larger capacity magazines being used.
Another device designed to slow down the time required to reload a semi-automatic firearm is presently described online at: http://www.alloutdoor.com/2014/01/20/lwrc-previews-ca-compliant-magazine-less-ar/. This device comprises a side loading fixed magazine that is filled with individual cartridges, that is, the cartridge or cartridges are inserted into the magazine one at a time through a side opening. Disadvantages of this device include a skilled operator still being able to reload a semi-automatic firearm relatively quickly without requiring any significant firearm disablement where the firearm is visibly disabled for a significant amount of time during reloading periods. Both these and other existing methods fall short of goals designed to prevent the attachment of larger capacity firearm magazines to semi-automatic firearms or to prevent relatively rapid reloading of a semi-automatic firearm as a skilled operator would still be able to reload these modified semi-automatic firearms using the above methods in a relatively quick and efficient manner.
Against the above background, there is a clear need to design a semi-automatic firearm that is unable to be rapidly reloaded. Additionally, such a firearm may be designed to accept only low capacity firearm magazines that cannot be rapidly exchanged in order to diminish the risk posed by such firearms.